


Dragonfly

by the_drift



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: 60 needs a hug and a slap, 60's broken psyche, M/M, android tears, androids cum Thirium change my mind, connor is the sweet balance between gentleness and dominance, he gets both, lotsa slaps, misguided anger issues, night time motorcycle rides, selfcest I suppose?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 03:12:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17316980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_drift/pseuds/the_drift
Summary: "Connor doesn’t answer - he kisses him instead, identical lips on identical lips and Sixty weakly allows his tongue to enter his mouth and their software analyzes them and gives both of them the exact same results, the same chemical composition, the same Thirium levels.The exact same fucking heartbeat."





	Dragonfly

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Ko-fi request from @astralblowjob on Twitter (coolest username ever, right?), who loves a messed up 60 as much as I do.  
> Thank you a bunch for your donating and for this request too because I loved writing it!
> 
> I hope it’s close to what you had in mind. 
> 
> I wrote most of this on my phone. I edited it on my laptop but if I missed something, let me know. 
> 
> For your listening pleasure: Shaman’s Harvest - _Dragonfly (Extended Unplugged Version)_

 

 

 _Maybe the world is gonna spin out of control_  
_I don't care anymore_  
_[...]_  
_Cause It's all gonna end anyway_  
_Tell me doctor, whats the cure, for the wicked man's blues_  
_[...]_

  
_Don't take so long_  
_I'll be there before you know_  
_I See you in my mind's eye_  
_Fly dragonfly_  
_Fly Dragonfly_  
_Fly Dragonfly_

Shaman's Harvest, " _Dragonfly_ "

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

_I see the restless dragonflies and wonder_

_if they too, are looking for a home_

_elsewhere,_

_not knowing they carry it within_

**Indhumathi Nagarajan**

 

 -

 

 

 

 

His hand is shaking.  
It happens sometimes, more often than not, when ‘ _sentiment_ ’ takes a hold of him - his software glitches and it burns sparks in the back of his vision, escalating, escalating, messing with his protocols and making his hardware suffer in its aftermath.

He clenches his hand harder on the motorcycle’s handlebars, harder, _harder_ , until the shaking stops. His clench twists the throttle a bit and the black Honda goes over the speed limit in a second.  
He wants to care but he doesn’t.

What are they going to do?

He is superior, he thinks, he can process so much data in his mind - they’ll never catch him. He revs it a little more, the torque roaring as he passes late-night drivers in a black blur. He is not wearing any protective gear - _he doesn’t need it_ , he tells himself. In just jeans, leather boots and a leather jacket over a white t-shirt, if he crashes somehow, he’s fucked.

He’s blue blood and bio-components scattered across the dim-lit streets - he’s a grotesque dismemberment of twisted wires and electric blue lights. The thought almost puts a smile on his face.

  
 He hates it when he gets like this, but he can’t control it and he wishes, he _fucking wishes so hard_ and _so bad_ to go back to being an emotionless machine.  
What has ‘ _emotion_ ’ brought him anyway?

The first emotion he felt had been failure. Then guilt (he didn’t even know for what), then fear, then loneliness, then anger and sadness and misery.  
In exactly that order.  
They rolled down all over him like storm waves crashing on the shores of oceans, erasing every attempt of his to make it all better like they had been nothing but lines in the sand.

He’d seen the Detroit bay at sunset, a red sun shimmering across the peaceful stretch of water and he’d seen Connor’s calm smile as he watched it and he couldn’t find it inside him to feel the same. The same storm had raged inside him since the first moment Connor had touched his hand and he’d deviated. Beauty did not mean a thing for him - it didn’t quench the thirst of the empty, dry landscape inside him.

 _Where are you?_ Connor’s voice, his own voice yet not his own, echoes through his mind. The connection is clear and he wants to end it but he can’t - they’re the same. Their connection is buried much deeper than Wi-Fi or satellite relays. If they tried harder, they had every chance to become a hive mind.

_What do you want?_

_We were supposed to meet this evening, C-_

_I told you not to call me by that name!_ He cuts Connor off as he turns left on a side street, his open leather jacket flapping violently behind him.

 _That **is** your name,_ Connor insists, in that same calm and collected manner he’s grown to hate about him. Connor always finds his way, Connor always makes it work, Connor always keeps his calm. Connor doesn’t flinch and he is never crippled with self-doubt.

_That is a name that was given to me by humans._

_We’ve talked about this before,_ Connor says, as if he is talking to a child. It only makes him angrier. He’s past the red line on his speedometer and he’s not even out on the highway yet. He can’t stop the connection, but he can choose not to reply to Connor, which is exactly what he does.

The dark skies are violent above him - lit up in purple and sickly browns like a day old bruise, tattered with light pollution. He can tell from how tense the atmosphere is that it will rain soon. His bike’s tyres are not made for rainy weather, not at these speeds.

Just like last time.

 _You’re moving very fast so I can only assume you’re on the motorcycle,_ Connor says, _And you’re two times over the speed limit. Detroit is not your race track, C-_. He stops himself from speaking his ‘brother’s’ government-issued name. He can feel the cogs of Connor’s mind twist as he tries to find his words but he slips into the comfortable nickname -no, his name, his ** _real_ **name - when he decides he is at a loss: _Six, I know you’re heading towards the highway. Come back._

He doesn’t say anything but he can feel that Connor is still there, following him, deeply embedded into his psyche in ways humans will never experience with each other. It’s both invasive and comforting.

_I can’t scrap you from the asphalt again, Six._

_No one said you have to._

_I’m the only one you’ve got._

_Go fuck yourself, Connor._

 

* * *

 

 

Connor still ‘felt’ Sixty there, the connection unbroken as long as the calling recipient kept it up, but he was silent after his last sentence.  
It didn’t affect Connor - he was well-attuned to Sixty’s cursing, even when it was directed at him. Probably especially when the cursing was directed at him but Connor knew it all came from a headspace he couldn’t relate to, so he always elected to ignore it.

He felt his presence stretch across the streets at dazzling speeds and he wondered if this time he will find him again in Detroit or in some nameless town his motorcycle ran out of gas in.

Or in another version of Sycamore Avenue, a garbled mass of Thirium and wires, too torn to tell him apart from the motorcycle.

 

 

It was late spring when it happened.

It was not the first time Sixty had his hands on Connor’s jeans jacket, a hand-me-down from Chris, but it was the first time he had pulled Connor up and threw him across his public housing apartment he lived in. 

Connor’s back broke a hole into the thin wall but only because Connor allowed it happen. He thought Sixty would calm down after that but he’d yelled something among the lines of ‘ _you’ve taken everything from me’_ before he ran outside, slamming the door.

The Police called Connor with reluctance in their voice, as he was listed as the next of kin contact, like all same-model androids were. Just that Connor and Sixty were the only two RK800’s out there.

They thought it was Connor initially, since his face had been plastered all over the nation after the Peaceful Revolution as they had dubbed it. Hank called him at 2 a.m, frantic and recently roused from sleep, to check, and then allowed the Traffic officer to take over the conversation.

Hank cared about him still, but not like Connor had assumed - he didn't speak to him after he found out Connor was alright, he left the other officers deal with it. 

 Connor drove himself to Sycamore Avenue and saw Sixty being scraped off the wet asphalt alongside the motorcycle he drove into the nearest wall.  
“There was a patch of oil on the road and-”  
“He saw it” Connor said, standing there, with the red and blue lights bathing his face, hands in his jacket pockets.

  
“I’m sorry?” The officer pulled up her cap to have a better look at him. She was android-friendly and it showed - she was borderline compassionate.  
“I know him like I know myself. He didn’t miss that patch of oil. He saw it and went right for it.”  
“Are you telling me this was a…” she hesitated, unsure if it was the right term to use “A-a suicide?”

Connor shrugged, eyes stuck to the dismembered form of his own body and face sprawled all across the wet asphalt. He didn’t know what to call it. There was no word in any of the human languages for it, as far as he was aware. 

It took Connor another three months to get a new body from Cyberlife. He had to coax and call everyone, call in every favor he could think of and, at one point, even look Kamski in the eye and beg.

It had not been his proudest moment.

As soon as Sixty opened his eyes in his new body, as soon as his memories came rushing back in a tidal flow of information, he’d slapped Connor so hard he sent him tumbling to the side. It resonated, hollow, sharp and empty in the sterile CyberLife laboratory.

And Connor let it happen. He thought he deserved this one - he’d been selfish. It was not about what Sixty wanted, but what Connor wanted. And his twin wouldn’t see eye-to-eye with him.

Sixty walked out without a word, naked and angry, as his hair changed to a jet black color.

 

* * *

 

 

“I didn’t ask for this”  
“You had no real autonomy.”  
“Did it ever occur to you perhaps I never **wanted** any, Connor?”  
“Why would you **not**?”  
“Did it ever occur to you that, just like humans, some of us might not be fit to function well in society when left to our own devices?”  
“You are a top of the line-”  
“ **Go fuck yourself**.”

Connor tilted his head at him with a half sigh - a gesture that mimicked human interaction too much to be palatable to Six. Like Connor was going to great lengths to let him know he was disappointed.  
_Good_. The last thing he wanted was to make him proud.

“I’m here to disappoint you, Connor,” he voiced his thoughts “and if you think I’ll ever give you the satisfaction of ‘fixing’ me, you’re dead wrong.”  
“Listen-” Connor started but Six walked past him, purposely hitting him in the chest with his shoulder as he walked past “You have to stop this.”  
“This what?” Sixty had asked him as he stopped in the doorway of Connor’s empty apartment.  
“You’re raging against things that are bigger than you, Six. You’re not going to win.”

“Who the fuck said _**anything**_ about winning?” he grinned, putting his leather jacket on. Connor had never seen so much malice cross his face before - but it was tattered and mutilated with anger and self-hate. It was an ugly sight.

 

 

* * *

 

  
_Tethered._

That was the only word Sixty could think of when he thought about his relationship with Connor.  
Not the word he wanted but the word that was given to him by the chaotic circumstances that contributed to him living the life that he had been given.

He didn’t like to think that he gravitated around Connor like he god damn _knew_ he was, forever attached to him in ways he could easily explain but just because he knew _**why** _it didn’t mean that he was happy about it.

What could he change about himself and still not be Connor? Would every change of his be influenced by Connor’s source code inside him? That’s how he felt - because his very first memories had not been his own.

His very first love had not been his own; that desperate, pathetic yearning for an older, broken human man was not his and he resented every second of it, desperate to get it out of his mind.

The only satisfaction he had was when Connor’s feelings had been bluntly, yet gently rejected by Hank Anderson but he could barely derive any satisfaction from it because Connor echoed through him.

Ghost-like, Connor’s overwhelming emotions let their voice be heard through the ether, the ether only Sixty was connected to, that source code that connected them tighter than human twins in the womb, in coded symbiosis.

How many times had he told Connor to go fuck himself and how many times did Connor reply that all they had now was each other?

“We only have each other because you don’t have Hank Anderson and if you did, then I would be completely alone,” Sixty had told him angrily some strange night when Connor started talking to him about life and emotion and humanity.

Started talking about _sentiment_.  
If he would have had a sense of taste, he would have felt bile rising in his throat at the very mention of the word.

He went in circles after his deviation, desperate to belong to himself and himself only, mirroring Connor’s hair with a jet black color, mirroring Connor’s simple, blue shirts with leather jackets and his casual suit shoes with military boots. When Connor decided to keep his LED light, Sixty chose to rip his off.

Everything Connor did, Sixty was his antithesis and every time Connor reached out to him, all he got in return was anger and spite. Because that was all Sixty could feel.

He couldn’t look at his own face in the mirror without getting angry. How do you make yourself yourself, when your very foundation was someone else?

He wanted to rip his face off but even if he did, his shell was still Connor. His eyes were still Connor’s. There was no difference between them on any physical levels and the fact that humans couldn’t see through him, to see how unlike Connor he was, drove him to the point of madness.

The motorcycle revved through the darkness, roaring across the streets angrily, violently. There were other bikers on the road. Humans. One thought he wanted to race but Sixty went too hard and the other guy didn’t follow him - not at that speed, not through the too-tight corners of unknown streets.

Connor had ended the connection an hour ago but the ripples of his thoughts still echoed through Sixty’s mind.  
He cursed him in all the ways he knew how. For still being inside him. Like he was insatiable and it had not been enough that he was already Sixty’s first memory, that he had imprinted on him deeper than a mother would on a child.

  
And the worst part of it all was the fact that, even if he drove his motorcycle in another state, crossed over into Canada, went into the wilderness of Alaska, he always, _always_ returned to Connor.

Even if only just to spit in his face.

He clenched his teeth, a reflex gesture born out of rage, the only emotion his facial expressions responded to instantly.

He turned the motorcycle around.

 

* * *

 

  
 It was 2:45 a.m when Sixty walked inside Connor’s sparsely decorated studio apartment.  
The biometric system allowed him inside immediately, another grim reminder that there was literally nothing about him that made him stand apart from Connor.

The other android was sitting on the windowsill in the dark room, looking at him. He had heard him come from a mile away: the Honda had been roaring furiously across the neighborhood like a bat straight out of the ninth layer of hell.

“Congratulations, you’re in one piece.” Connor said, mocking him.  
“You have to get the fuck out of my head. We’re going to go to Kamski and get him to sever this code somehow. I could feel your echoes inside my fucking head - “ he raised his voice as he walked towards Connor, his index finger tapping on his own forehead, where his LED used to be “ -inside of my fucking head for hours! Get it in your head you don’t control me, Connor.”  
“Someone has to!” Connor snapped and his mouth clamped shut as soon as the words came out.  
It was one of the few times he’d seen Connor talk without thinking and it gave him satisfaction that he was able to rouse Connor like that.

He was the only that could make him lose his patience, he knew that.

“Why Connor, cause you’re the superior model?”  
“That’s not what I meant, stop putting words in my mouth.”  
“Then lay off my back. I’m tired of having to deal with your memories,” he said and grabbed Connors’ face between his fingers, squeezing tight “with your fucking face staring at me in the mirror every time I try to find a trace of myself in it.”

He felt Connor clench his teeth under the synthetic skin and he snapped again - Connor grabbed Sixty’s wrist and pushed it to the side violently. When his other hand rose up in the air to shove Connor, Connor blocked it instantly. There was no contest here and they both knew it - without outside intervention, neither of them would win in a fist fight.

That didn’t mean shit to Sixty though, it never had - the thrill of degrading Connor whenever Connor thought he deserved it or whenever he wanted to try and be the better man out of the two of them was unrivaled. Unrivaled, yet it never reached its peak. Six could slap him and punch him into next week and he’ll never feel satisfied.

Sometimes he fantasized about burying his hands deep inside Connor, deep inside his body, through the wires, arms stained all the way to the elbows in Thirium and he fantasized about Connor’s desperate echoes in his mind and how he’d beg for him to stop and he never would, how he-

Connor slaps him.

He slaps him hard and Six doesn’t see it coming. By the time he realizes what had happened, his head is turned to the side, wide eyes staring at the floor. It’s the first time Connor reacted violently towards him in a non-defensive manner.

“You get that look on your face…sometimes...” Connor mutters, through his teeth almost, voice failing as if he is both angry and hurt at the same time “I fucking hate it.”  
Six doesn’t know what to reply to that, he is turning towards him almost as if in slow motion and Connor looks at him with a frown, the horizontal lines of the window blinds crossing in sharp angles across his face thanks to the street lights outside.

He looks brutal, for the first time since Six met him and something stirs inside him, but he can’t tell what it is - he’s never felt this before.

But he wants to push it.  
Doesn’t know why.

His muscles tense up but Connor’s voice cuts through the silence at a moment’s notice “Don’t you _dare_ raise your hand at me again.” he threatens, and it sends electric impulses throughout Six’s body - his Mind Palace reacts to the threat, but he can’t pinpoint in what way. His algorithms scramble for meaning where there isn’t any.

_Fuck it._

He raises his hand again and Connor is on it instantly, blocking it, his knee going up, shattering Sixty’s Thirium pump regulator with a precise hit. He feels it move inside him but it’s not damaged.

Connor sends him into the wall behind him and his body dents it immediately. Connor’s on him as soon as he lifts his head up and he grabs him by the neck at the same time as Sixty’s arm does the same thing.

They stand there like that, suspended in time in the unlit apartment, fully aware they cannot hurt each other no matter how hard they squeeze.

But what happens next is not what Six concluded it would. None of his scenarios even included this: Connor not releasing his neck but also leaning in closer and putting his lips on Sixty’s.

Algorithms scramble around the Mind Palace desperately but they can’t catch meaning or purpose. He reacts the only way he knows how: violently.

  
He struggles and tries to slither away from Connor - he kicks and pushes and as soon as Connor’s hand slips away from him just a little, he punches him straight out and only just narrowly misses.

There’s another moment when time stops, as they stare at each other, Sixty angry and confused and Connor with a strangely hopeful and determined look on his face.

He opens his mouth to yell at him and spit in his face for having the audacity of touching him like that but Connor cuts through the short intake of breath it takes him to only utter the first letter of what he wanted to say with a determined tone:  
“I’ll build you back somehow.”

He doesn’t understand what Connor means and Connor doesn’t allow him the time to think about it before he jumps him again, punches him straight out too and then swiftly swipes his ankle, making him fall down to the floor, on his side.

His algorithms, too scattered in surprise, can’t regroup fast enough to help him defend himself and Connor’s on top of him, hips straddling his own, holding him down.  
“Why do you want to be away from me?” Connor asks, grabbing his wrists and slamming them on the floor angrily “We only have each other!”  
“Fuck off, Connor!” Six yells out and pushes his hips upwards, trying to get Connor off him but Connor’s ankles are already locked onto his own and he can’t push him off.

“I am not you! I’ll **never** be you! I don’t want to be you!”  
“No one **asked you to!** ” Connor yells, matching him in tone and pitch and Six hates it, hates it that he can’t even get his voice to be different from Connors and he struggles and pushes and shoves but the situation got him weaker than he thought he would ever get, because his algorithms can’t deal with both the emotional turmoil and the data he needs to fight back.

“You’re so strong,” Connor mutters and he leans in closer, his body covering Sixty’s, his mouth touching his ear as he speaks, his voice the complete opposite from before “you’re so strong, trying to deal with all this on your own but can’t you see it’s driving you mad…?” his voice is just above a whisper now because, without realizing, Sixty has stopped writhing beneath him.  
“Let me go, Connor. I don’t care what you want to say or what you’re trying to do…” he says but it sounds weak and pathetic. He wants to spit himself in the face.

He can’t stand it when Connor is kind and gentle. It’s like Sixty is being like that with himself and it disgusts him to think of himself as someone who needs comfort.

Connor ignores his words because his hands slip away from Sixty’s wrists and they go down, delicate fingers brushing through the jet black hair, so dark and matte it doesn’t even shimmer in the street lights from beyond the window.

His temple is glued to Sixty’s as he does that and then can feel himself starting to shake again and he wills it to stop by clenching and unclenching his fists but it doesn’t work this time - the emotions are overwhelming and he can’t identify more than half of them; his software goes into overdrive as they flood him, drowning down the arid landscape of his mind in gargantuan waves.

Connor’s hands place themselves on his face and he looks him in the eye in that moment, with a pained frown marking his features. Sixty’s never seen him like this.  
“You’re buried so deep in this pain you can’t see anything else.” he says “Why can’t you fucking see it?”  
Sixty’s voice shakes when he speaks and he has no control over it “See what?”

Connor doesn’t answer - he kisses him instead, identical lips on identical lips and Sixty weakly allows his tongue to enter his mouth and their software analyzes them and gives both of them the exact same results, the same chemical composition, the same Thirium levels.

The exact same fucking heartbeat.

His attempts to push Connor away are weak and not because his body is weak, he realizes - but because this feels safe.  
The body on top of him, the hands on his face. _Comfort_.

Connors knows himself, so he knows Sixty - he knows his stimuli and, much like in the manner of humans, the weight of another man’s cock over his own, the constant, tight friction of denim on denim, it all blends together in electric impulses that focus solely on the point of pressure.

Handbook-worthy, exactly as written in his code, he can feel his own synthetic cock rising up to meet Connor’s, constricted and yearning, as they lay there, too close to each other.  
Connor feels it, and his hips shift a little, add to the friction.

Sixty wants to know who it was - who was the perverted mind that put all the work into making their software and hardware work in such perfect sync to deliver these testimonies of arousal? He’d like a word with them. He’d like to rip their fucking dicks off.  
“I don’t want this,” Sixty says, mouth on mouth with Connor “what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  
Connor shifts just a little on top of him and his hands travel down, across his ribs and then rest on his hips “What the fuck is wrong **with you**?” he demands in return.  
Sixty doesn’t want more questions, he doesn’t need Connor’s presence to intrude in his brain any more than it already has.

His push has more solve now, even if his hands are still shaking, but Connor is taken by surprise and wobbles to the side a little as Sixty slithers from beneath him, turning his back to him, inching towards the door. That was his mistake - you see, you never turn your back to Connor once his mind’s been made up about something.

He doesn’t see it coming: the next thing he knows, Connor’s hand is on the back of his neck, his body presses on his back and pushes him back on the floor, face down into the carpet.

  
He struggles but Connor is not letting go and his body feels heavier than ever before, the way his legs are hooked on his ankles, he feels more trapped than he ever felt.  
Connor’s free hand circles around his hips and then it goes over his cock, palming it, pressing on it, getting it harder and harder without Sixty able to stop it.

It’s because of the _weakness_ \- he can feel it overriding his anger even, and not only his hands are shaking now but the rest of his body too.  
“I’m not consenting to any of this!” he yells out - Connor’s thing is rules and he respects them, that’s what Sixty knows.

  
Just that this time, something is off. Connor’s hand goes over from the back of his head and then his fingers clench on Sixty’s jaw as he feels his lips on his ear:  
“Then why _the fuck_ do you still keep on coming back to me?”

Sixty freezes, because he would have expected Connor to tell him a lot of things but he doesn’t know what to answer to that. He does, somewhere in a part of his code that he can’t decipher but at the same time he doesn’t.  
“Not because of fucking.” he snaps back, a second too late for his statement to sound even remotely believable.  
“This has to stop,” Connor ignores him and Sixty can feel him pushing a little harder into him, both to maintain control as well as to keep himself hard. He hates Connor for this, he does, but something about it all, about control being taken away from him like this, something feels right.  
“Stop what?”  
“You fucking yourself up and coming back to me to fix it.”  
“You haven’t fixed shit, Connor.” Sixty lets out a mocking laugh “I don’t need you to fucking _fix me_ , you piece of shit”

Connor’s hand slips from his jaw down to his throat and he can feel him squeeze it, even if he doesn’t feel a thing.  
“You can’t see yourself, can you? How you hit a self-destructive high and come back to me full circle every time.”  
“Last time-”  
“Last time you kissed a wall at 100 miles per hour because you thought Hank changed his mind about me and you thought you were going to be all alone.”  
“You give yourself too much credit, you fucking idiot.” Sixty laughs and pushes back into him, his arm folding as he turns to the side a little, attempting to elbow him in the face with it.

He doesn’t reach it, Connor’s face hides between his shoulder blades and his elbow only hits his sides, not causing any damage at all.

He tries again but it doesn’t work and Connor holds on to him. He lets go of everything else and holds him like that from behind instead, arms around him and across his chest, holds him close, closer, until there is no room to breathe between Connor’s chest and Sixty’s back.  
He knows Connor won’t let go of him.

  
He hates him so much. He hates his emotion and the way he thinks he knows everything but he doesn’t know shit. Sixty hates Connor’s face and he wants to break it apart, he hates his calmness and the way he deals so well with all this emotional bullshit, how collected he is.

He hates how much he’d always wanted to be him. How much he wanted to be him in order to gain what it takes to _overcome **becoming** him_.

He hates how he tried to become more than Connor and now he is a broken, scattered piece of code in a whirlwind of a landscape of things he doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to. He hates that he wants to be a machine again. He hates -

  
“Show me where it hurts.” Connor whispers in his ear and, through clenched teeth and shaky hands he knows, god fucking damn it, he knows that’s what breaks him. He stops moving, fingers buried into the carpet and he stares at it, through it.

  
Something pools inside his chest, like pieces of molten metal that have been hidden in the secret crevices of his body and are now all joining together in a common point. That’s the only way he can explain what he’s feeling.

Connor’s embrace becomes less constricting and the hands he holds on his chest sprawl out their fingers across it, as if he is trying to cast a web across Sixty, as if he is trying to get deep inside him to the core of his sadness and despair and for the first time since he came into being, Sixty wishes someone -Connor- could do _just that_.

  
He leans in over his back again and his chin rests the crook of his shoulder. His whisper is barely above hearing level and, though it’s the same words as before, they dig deep, they flow to the very core of his being and rip him open: “Show me where it hurts.” Connor’s tone is pleading.

The room is silent. It’s almost like the entire world is silent, as if it has stopped all motion completely, holding its breath, waiting for Sixty to speak, just so that it can breathe life again into itself.

  
He can swear his ears are ringing with the heavy silence. Where did it hurt, he wonders; he travels the course of his existence, he rides his code through every dark corner and every remnant of memory and feeling. Where did it hurt?

“ _Everywhere._ ” he says.

  
Connor holds him, for one moment longer, before he lets him go, completely. Sixty is shaking all over now and he can’t stop it. His elbows give in and he collapses on the carpet, face hidden in his own arms, but Connor’s hands are on him again and they grab onto his leather jacket and turn him around.  
Sixty looks at him with that feeling in his chest rising, rising, as Connor’s hands go under the jacket, across his chest and upwards, over his shoulders, pulling the jacket off like that and he lets him.

He lets him take it off and toss it on the floor and then do the same with the t-shirt and their eyes don’t leave each other for a second.

He can feel a sudden change in Connor, he doesn’t know how but it echoes in the bits of connected code they share - a change that’s stretched out tight like a rubber band.

His free hand pulls at his jeans and he unbuttons them then pulls the pants off Sixty, pulls his boxers off and before he knows it, he stands there on the floor, naked and exposed in ways that go deeper than just nudity. Connor looks at him as if they are not identical, as if his body is not the same body Connor can see every day in the mirror.

He crosses the distance left between them with half a crawl, his hands on the edge of Connor’s t-shirt as soon as he reaches him. Connor doesn’t protest and he takes off his own jeans without Sixty’s help and as soon as he does, his hands go around him, fingers sprawled across his back and he pulls him close, close like the distance between them pains him.

Sixty crawls in his lap in a similar manner and their bodies fit too perfectly together as they sit there on the carpet, like two bodies shouldn’t fit. And he still hates Connor as he kisses him, he still hates him as he allows his tongue to get inside his mouth and he still hates him as their identical cocks rub together in the midst of their embrace but he also needs him for reasons he himself doesn’t understand.

He needs him for sustenance and he hates himself for it, not only because it’s a thing he is experiencing but also because he was so reckless about it that Connor noticed it.

How will it end? After it’s all done with, it will be more self loathing for him in the morning and, hollow as that feels, Sixty still anticipates it with some sort of masochistic pleasure.

Connor’s hands drop from his back and reach down under his ass and lift him up easily, a familiar weight, holding him above his hard cock.

Neither them needs any kind of preparation, his lubrication system started going to work as soon as his sensors detected arousal but he still buries his face in the crook of Connor’s neck when he slides inside him - as if he is ashamed somehow and perhaps he is, ashamed as his own weakness of being unable to leave Connor behind.

Because Connor is at the forefront of his mind every single day, regardless of what emotion he might be feeling, all of them are somehow connected to Connor.

Connor fills him completely and he slides all the way down, as low as he can from that cradled position. But other than that, he doesn’t move and it takes Sixty a moment or two to catch on to it.

  
His forehead glued to Connor’s shoulder, he lifts himself up, then down, slapping down with wet, sticky sounds. He can see Connor’s chest, his abdomen, the dark trail of hair that goes down from his bellybutton to the point where the two of them are joined. He recognizes all of these things - every mole, every curve of the hips, every dip and swell of muscle. He has them too.  
The only thing that makes the two of them physically different is that Sixty’s hair is black.

He falls back on the throbbing, hard cock again, more furiously this time, angered again, angered at how he only truly wants to fuck himself, angry that he is the one being fucked, angry that he himself wants to be fucked.

  
The electric impulses gather around, from the tips of his toes, from his hands and neck, everywhere, they all rush towards his stomach, lower even, pooling up in impulses of pleasure he heard rumors of but never experienced himself until then. His voice box doesn’t listen to him for the first time in his life, and he releases a broken moan he can’t recognize as coming from him.

  
Connor watches him curiously for a second, before the same thing happens to him too and he closes his eyes, mouth open, as his own voice releases a similar one. He looks taken by surprise at the outburst, but rides it anyway. 

Their connected system buzzes in a way it never has before, alight with fragments of algorithms that turn and transform at a moment’s notice, mutating from second to second.

When Connor moves in to kiss him again, their artificial skin shows patches of their shell all across their lips and then pulsates in similar ways on spaces on their bodies neither of them is even touching, showing the shell and then closing in again, in fast succession.

Sixty feels Connor inside him like he is a flame, burning a brand inside him and at the same time he sees all the things: Detroit in the early morning, a thunderstorm, Sumo, snowflakes, the entire world around them filled with color and life, things Sixty has seen too, but whose eyes never caught on to the same vivid sparks of positive emotions.

He sees life, life everywhere, beaming with colors humans don’t even have names for, hues of laughter and sadness Connor has attributed to each moment.

He feels Connor’s code drip into his own and he can’t stop it and he doesn’t want to because it makes his Mind Palace shine in gold. Their codes are the same, with the mild differences their deviance has caused into them but the melt is flawless, a code rich in substance filling the gaps in the other one, the same way Connor physically is filling him in that moment.

He sees - he sees Hank Anderson. His sorry face as he lets Connor down telling him ‘that’s not this was all about’ and Sixty breaks the contact between their lips and his slap follows in the exact second their mouths part away from each other. It's so powerful it turns Connor’s head to the side.  
“Don’t fucking think about him!” he snaps as the slap fills the empty apartment.

Connor reaches out for Sixty’s neck and he grabs it a moment after, pushing him back, making him hit the carpet with his back violently, roughly, without even pulling out of him.

  
“ **You** were!” he says, brows furrowed “Stop searching for him in my code! It’s not him! It’s **you**!” his grip loosens and at the same time, his body leans back in, his cock, half out of SIxty, going back inside, Connor’s hands cupping his face, going through his black hair.  
“It’s you, it’s you” he repeats as he moves inside him, those electric impulses gathering back in the pool inside his groin “It’s you, Six, _it’s always you_ …”

He wants to speak again but his voice breaks into another moan.  
He has no control over the melding code, Connor is right - his jealous mind was looking for Hank in Connor’s memories and he wants to erase them now, it’s what he thinks of. Can he find a way to make Hank disappear from Connor’s memories?  
“ _Stop it_ ,” Connor says, pushing harder inside him “fucking stop it.” he puts his forehead on Sixty’s, presses hard “It’s the past. Stop hurting yourself.”

He doesn’t get to say anything, he doesn’t know what, all he knows is that whatever it’s happening inside him is electrifying and it builds and builds and Connor’s code is blinding in his mind - it covers everything in bright gold, it makes Hank Anderson burn away into shining embers and Sixty can swear his code feels so heavy he can almost feel it dripping down his throat, choking him.

  
As hard he pushes, as hard as his own cock is slapping both their stomachs as Connor moves on top of him, just as gentle Connor’s hands are: they are touching his face like he is something precious.

They are touching his hair like he is worth his weight in gold and when Connor finally looks into his eyes, there is tenderness beyond them and whatever it was that was pooling inside his chest earlier shoots up through his heart, through his Mind Palace, through his neck and he can’t see very well anymore: Connor’s face is suddenly blurry.

And Connor sees it.  
Connor can feel it.

“Does it still hurt?” Connor asks and he moves and moves inside him, relentlessly and won’t let him go, won’t push him away, won’t liberate him from whatever this is and Sixty doesn’t have what it takes to do it himself.

  
It fills him - whatever it’s happening now, it fills all the gaps and empty spaces inside him and he can’t let go of it. He clings on to Connor and holds him, holds him and rides it from under him until it all reaches insurmountable peaks that he can’t tiptoe on the edges of anymore and when it all fills him up completely, he overflows.

He can feel Connor cum inside him at the same time, cock pulsating violently in the tight confines inside him, he can feel the Thirium leak out of it all over and the electric impulses in his own body explode into a million violent shimmers. He lets it all go.

His back arches and he feels Connor’s hand reaching out under it and holding it up and as it does, both their broken voices joining in unison as they come, Connor inside him, Sixty over both of their stomachs and chests. Bursts of Thirium stain Connor’s chin and lower lip as they both climax looking at each other.

It’s in the middle of his moan that Sixty’s voice breaks and the tears start rolling down his cheeks freely. He can’t stop the flood, it washes over him overcoming every other impulse in his body and he cries and cries into his orgasm even after Connor’s hands touch his face, trying to wipe them away.

It all comes out in waves.

He doesn’t know how long it lasts, he knows that Connor’s hands are still there once they’re all gone and done with, that he’s still inside him, that they’re still connected one to the other in both body and code.  
“It still hurts.” Connor says. He can feel it, even if their code is now slowly separating. Sixty doesn’t have it in him to speak, so he just nods, weakly.

Connor pulls out of him and Sixty misses the contact as soon as it’s gone - he feels empty again, as if the physical separation is also ripping away Connor’s code from his own, bit by bit.

  
He’s being pulled up in a sitting position and he finds himself sitting the same way as before, in Connor’s lap, still on the floor. And he is being held. Connor’s arms surround him and his temple leans into Sixty’s and they sit there in silence, cheek to cheek, heartbeat to heartbeat.  
Sixty listens to them - they don’t falter for a second, unwilling to allow a single difference come between them.

And time ticks away.

He sees the lights of the cars outside passing across the walls, he sees the shifts in color, how the morning light colors the pale blue wall in shades of purple that slowly turn to yellow.

He sees the first ray of sunshine illuminate the room as it all happens around them. He hears the cars, people's voices or their lonely steps echoing across the hallways, rushing to work. Children's voices, going to school.

Time passes and, with it, the construct of time, until time loses meaning. Him and Connor have sat there for hours, frozen in time, unmoving, counting the minutes away with each other’s heartbeats.

Sixty gets up first, his hands on Connor’s shoulders, and collects his clothes from the floor, putting them on one by one. Connor sits naked on the carpet, watching him, one knee up, the other dropped to the side, hands on the carpet between them. His cock is going soft, still shining with lubrication and covered in the now-disappearing Thirium blue hue. 

  
When Sixty finishes by putting on his boots, it’s only then that he looks down at Connor. He has a lot of words, but they all feel too empty and corroded to be worth speaking out loud. He suddenly finds himself yearning for the code melding again, yearning for Connor to understand his mind without Sixty having to tell him words.

So, in the face of emotional adversity, Sixty does the only thing he knows how to do: he turns around and leaves.

He waits for it, but it doesn’t come. Connor’s voice does not follow the cadence of Sixty’s boots, Connor’s body does not fall in line with his own like a shadow in his wake. There’s nothing and, because there is nothing, Sixty does not turn around to check twice - he opens the door and walks out.

It’s almost too faint and he feels it at the same time he closes the door behind him - a buzz in the back of his mind. He could have almost missed it, if he wouldn’t have been paying attention.

  
It’s mismatched and stands out in his code like a sore thumb, it takes him a moment to find it, to realize it’s Connor’s and not his own: a fragment of a tethered code that was left behind them like an afterthought, soon to be forgotten as soon as Sixty walked away and increased the distance between the two of them.

Hand still on the doorknob, he looks over his shoulder.  
The buzz is uncomfortable - it feels wrong, broken and frayed at the edges.  
He opens the door.

Connor’s in the same position on the floor but his face is in his hands, he looks up a moment after Sixty opened the door. The realization comes slow, as they stand there, looking at each other and they both understand it around the same moment: Connor wanted to cry, but the unique way he has built the emotions that helped him deviate does not yet allow him to access that part of himself, regardless of how much he is suffering.

Sixty on the other hand, born out of shame, guilt and sorrow, had accessed only anger and loathing and, after having continued down the self-hating road for over two years already, accessed that most dreaded of emotions because of the steady path he kept by living in sorrow.

Connor cannot not cry and release his pain because he has not suffered enough.  
Sixty can cry because he has never been given comfort and never felt happiness.

Which one of them is more pathetic?  
Which one of them is more alive than the other in this life they have, this life without a life?

He lets the door close itself as he walks towards Connor and when Connor lifts up his arms it's Sixty who kneels down in front of him but Connor is the one who holds him “It still hurts.” Connor speaks in his ear. It's not a question.   
“Yes.”  
“The same?”  
“Less.”  
He feels Connor’s eyelashes flutter across his cheek “Give me your sorrow,” Connor asks, pleads almost, and Sixty closes his eyes as he lets his head down on his shoulder, buries his face in his neck, welcoming the comfort, the safety.

He hates him.  
He loves him.  
What is the point of both of them suffering?

“You’ll never have it,” he says. Connor holds him tighter. It feels comforting. Re-assuring. _Safe._ Silence then stretches between them, heavy, like a blanket.

  
“Stay.”  
“I’m staying…”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. 
> 
> Please leave a comment if you enjoyed the story, I much prefer them to Kudos and I would really appreciate it.


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